Catenaa, Sunday, October 04, 2026– A recent study shows that private equity firms own a significant portion of the global energy infrastructure, providing them authority over oil flow.
New research by Private Equity Climate Risk(PECR) shows that 20 private equity firms that control a combined $ 7.3 trillion in assets under management backed at least 244 energy companies that owned and operated over 1,050 fossil fuel assets around the world.
The new analysis of the 20 private equity firms that invested in global energy infrastructure found that, among their assets, the firms owned 15,000 miles of pipelines, 124 GW of power generation capacity across 370 fossil fuel-powered plants, and hundreds of oil and gas fields.
The research was done through data available on PitchBook on private markets, company websites, press releases, news reports, and regulatory filings.
The study revealed that the energy portfolios backed by the 20 private equity firms together produced an estimated 1.5 gigatons of harmful greenhouse gas emissions annually.
These emissions are far more than the annual fossil fuel emissions of entire countries, and rank fifth, behind only China, the US, India, and Russia, PECR research revealed.
Brookfield, BlackRock, Blackstone, ArcLight, IFM Investors, and KKR are the top six private equity firms assessed in the analysis, which has produced the highest estimated power generation in 2026.
According to OilPrices.com, a previous analysis by PitchBook showed that private equity funded more than $1.1 trillion in energy assets between 2010 and 2021, the overwhelming majority of which were fossil-fuel assets.
S&P Global reported in August last year that global private equity and venture capital investments in oil and gas transportation were on track to surpass the previous year’s levels.
S&P said that investment in the sector totalled $4 billion across 13 deals between January and August last year, higher than the $3.36 billion recorded across 12 deals in the same period the previous year.
Also, OilPrices.com said that private equity investment in greenhouse gas-producing industries is expected to continue in line with the artificial intelligence (AI) boom.
It said that several tech companies around the world are developing multiple large-scale data centres, many of which run on natural gas, which is used to power AI and other advanced computing operations. Investment in AI is, therefore, expected to drive up carbon emissions.
OilPrices.com said that “roughly half” of the top 10 data centre owners in the United States have been supported by private equity.
